


Sweet and Low

by UnscriptedCryptid



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: (Barry talks a lot), Barry needs a burger (or seven), Gen, He also needs to learn when to stop, and a day long nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 19:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12871611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnscriptedCryptid/pseuds/UnscriptedCryptid
Summary: Barry has the busiest day of his life, an accident 29 days in the making, and a conversation that needs to be had. In that order.





	Sweet and Low

**Author's Note:**

> This could have been short and kind of good, but instead it is long and pretty bad. Blame AO3 for making me wait three days for an account, Ezra Miller for making me want to tuck his Barry Allen in under three layers of blankets, and my useless hands for typing so many words.

It’s been a week.

Well, if you want to get technical about it, it’s been a month. 29 days, actually. 29 days since Bruce the actual Batman Wayne walked into Barry’s place, sat in Barry’s second-favorite chair in the dark and waited to recruit Barry into his super cool super hero squad.

But this specific week has been particularly—Barry doesn’t want to say _stressful_ , because yeah, there have been fires and explosions and stuff, but nothing Barry hasn’t been able to handle—but busy, for sure. Bruce says it’s to be expected; the resurrection of Superman has gone a long way to alleviate the fear that Steppenwolf’s armies spread across the globe, but the politics behind Superman’s very existence are still something too messy and complex for Barry—and most of the world, really—to understand. Just as there are people happy to see Superman back in action, there are factions of others still uneasy with the “False God” among them, those who cite Clark’s single-handed dismemberment of the rest of the league as enough reason to send Superman back into space.

And, yeah, maybe Barry can kind of see where they’re coming from. He’s well aware of the whole Pet Sematary fiasco. He was _there_. And when Barry realized that Clark was able to follow his every move mid-battle, he was perhaps the most terrified that he had ever been in his entire life. He had considered disappearing into the Speed Force for a hot second. But Clark’s proven himself to be an extremely warm and trustworthy guy since then. He’s formally apologized for the whole _almost-punching-your-head-off_ thing, indulged Barry in a race (which was not a tie, although that’s what Clark keeps insisting it was.) Hell. Clark took the whole team out to brunch. Which. Still a betrayal on Bruce’s part, but Barry will never begrudge free food.

The only problem is that that’s _Clark_. And the rest of the world doesn’t get to know Clark. Not the way that the League does, at least. The rest of the world only gets Superman. And Superman may have saved everyone (again), but he also took down five other heroes before doing so. And Barry won't claim to understand people at all, but he knows that they don’t tend to overlook that kind of thing.

So, yeah. The world’s been saved, but it’s still kind of a disaster, and the League’s had to deal with it. Except, for the time being, Superman’s been benched so that he can smooth things over with the press, and Wonder Woman and Aquaman have been staying in Themyscira and Atlantis respectively so that they can mitigate the damage done to their own people when Steppenwolf stole the Mother Cubes. So that really only leaves Bruce, Victor, and Barry himself. Which, on many levels, is _awesome_. Bruce has been placing more and more of his trust in Barry lately, which is something that Barry never realized that he needed until he had it. Just a few days ago, Bruce gave Barry his own solo mission—an evacuation job at Bruce’s newly purchased bank where some radical protestors with guns and a bomb (and what is it with people and bombs, anyway?) were attempting to make a statement about their disapproval over Bruce’s public endorsement of Superman by taking out an entire city block. Bruce placed his faith in Barry—told him he was the only one that could get there in time, told him that he could do it, that he could save everyone. _“Save one. Remember.”_ —and although Barry’s never dealt well with guns or bombs or death threats in general, his determination to prove himself weighed stronger than any of his fear.

And believe him. There was a lot of fear.

But in the end, he got everyone out. Even the bombers. Even the _bomb_. And he probably shouldn’t have thrown it into the ocean—Arthur’s going to give him an earful for that later, he’s sure—but it didn’t kill anyone, so he was pretty pleased with himself. And Bruce had been so proud! Or. At least Barry likes to think so. Barry assumes it was pride. Bruce locked eyes with him back at the Cave, clapped a hand on his shoulder, gave him a solid nod, which is totally what Barry imagines that a person as cool as Bruce’s pride would look like. And Barry, in that moment, realized that he was capable of doing this. Of being a hero. Fear and all.

But that was kind of the beginning of the end, too. Because from that moment on, Bruce’s trust became—not a burden, never a burden—but a distraction. Or a goal. Because the thing is, Barry wants to make his team proud of him so badly. He wants to be a hero the way that Bruce and Diana and Arthur and Victor and Clark are heroes, wants to be able to walk (or, uh, run) into the field of battle and help others without the constant panic and second guessing and tripping over his own two feet. So, when Bruce began calling on him more and more over the week, Barry complied, even though he knew that he was burning the candle at both ends. Or something beyond that, even. Because between his job at the crime lab, his two part time jobs (down from three, per his father’s request) and his bi-weekly visits to his dad in prison, Barry is starting to feel more like he just doused the entire candle in gasoline and is now watching it go down in flames.

And he’s tired. He’s really, really tired. But he can handle it. Right? Right.

He just has to last until the weekend. Then he can put out the flames. Go out to the store. Buy another candle. Because, you know, the whole metaphor thing. Barry’s not really sure if that’s how this works—that you can just go out and buy any old candle and call it your own before burning it at both ends, too—but he’ll make it work. He’s always made things work.

It’s just—it’s been a _week_ , you know?

But, hey. Only two days until he can (hopefully) sleep in and catch up on his snacking. Until then, it can’t get much worse.  
  
\---  
  
It gets much worse.

It’s four in the morning, and Barry is 86% sure that he’s about to pass out. He’s been crouching behind the same crate for the last three hours, trying to keep still and quiet as he observes the docks down below (operative word here being “trying”). Bruce got a tip about a potential heist down on the harbor—a smuggling deal that was supposed to start about an hour ago, according to his sources. And, given the general state of society, the League would normally delegate this type of crime to the police, but Bruce’s source also mentioned that there was going to be kryptonite involved in the deal, and given the general vortex of discourse that’s been following Superman (and, by extension, the League) around over the last month, Bruce was adamant that they (meaning Barry, Victor, and himself) be there to sort this one out. Which Barry gets. Understands completely.

But Barry’s cold and tired and bored and there’s salt caking itself into the creases of his suit because of all the wind and every time he tries to say anything through the comm, Bruce cuts him off with that gruff voice that makes Barry feel like he’s being scolded by his dad or something. Which is totally weird, because Bruce isn’t his dad—not at all, nope. And that’s not a line of thought that warrants any further exploration, because Barry isn’t a kid and even if he were, it’s not like Bruce would want to be his dad or anything, and Barry already has a perfectly good father anyway, one that he’s supposed to visit in prison in a few hours, as a matter of fact, and—

His rambling thoughts are cut off by his stomach as it gurgles once, loudly enough to make Barry stiffen up against the crate and think about how grateful he is that Bruce is on the other side of the pier.

Right. He’s hungry, too. Starving, actually.

That’s one of the problems with all of these missions lately. Barry wasn’t lying when he told Bruce that he’s a black hole of sacks—a snack hole, which is a joke he’s proud of, by the way. He usually eats somewhere between 12 to 18,000 calories a day—something he calculated in one of his temporary homes when he was bored and had nothing else to do—but he’s gone up to 30,000 before, no problem. Anything under 6 for too prolonged a period of time and he’s prone to dizzy spells. Which, come to think of it, is probably why he’s been feeling so faint recently. Everything’s been happening so fast that he hasn’t been able to find the time to just sit down and eat like he needs to (which is a foreign concept in every sense. Since when does anything seem fast to him?) And given the frequency with which Barry’s had to use his powers over the last month, he should probably be trying to reach the higher threshold on his daily caloric intake. But again, it’s fine. This weekend, he’ll order ten pizzas and rip through them while he marathons the newest season of Stranger Things on Netflix. Although, as Barry’s vision briefly tunnels, he wonders if maybe he should rush out and get something now, too, seeing as the smugglers are so dead-set on keeping the team waiting.

It wouldn’t hurt to ask.

Barry turns on the comm, straightens out his stiff back and winces as his spine audibly crackles. “Hey, uh, Br—Batman?”

“Get into position,” Bruce says in place of an answer. “They’re coming.”

And yeah. Right. Of course the criminals choose this moment to appear upon the horizon, boat nearly blending in with the dark waves crashing below. Why not? Well. At least the hunger’s a good distraction from the sudden, anxious anticipation that Barry gets every time he realizes that he’s about to be seeing a lot of guns.

He just has to take this one step at a time. Mission first. Food second. No problem.  
  
\---  
  
Of course, nothing wants to work right for him today. Don’t get him wrong, the mission on the harbor goes great. The smugglers step onto the dock, Bruce gives his signal, and before anyone even has a chance to pull out the guns, Barry’s pushed all but one man off of the port and into the water below, where Victor comes out from the piling he’d been hovering behind and ushers the smugglers onto the shore with his activated battle armor serving as enough persuasion for them to comply. Bruce takes the last man—the leader—kicking the weaponry out of his hands before grabbing onto the lapels of his shirt and demanding to know everything about the shipment, who it’s for, what it contains, so on, so forth. While he does so, Barry scopes out the small vessel, taking note of everything that he sees so that he can report back to Bruce once Bruce is done roughing the captain up. Barry even has the time to both apologize to the ocean for throwing a bomb at it (asking the water to pass the apology along to Arthur in the process, in case it works like that) and pose at the wheel as though he were the captain himself, although the experience is somewhat diminished by the clear absence of a captain hat anywhere on board and the persistent hunger that claws at Barry’s insides.

When he gets back to the dock, he catches the end of Bruce’s tirade, watches as Bruce snaps some handcuffs onto the leader before handing him over to the police. It’s still one of the coolest things that Barry has ever seen.

“What did you see?” Bruce asks as the policemen just start to board the vessel.

“It was just a bunch of stimulants,” Barry reports, jittering a leg in an attempt to dislodge some of the salt that’s jammed in the armor-plate over his knee. “Methamphetamines, mostly.”

“No kryptonite?” Bruce’s voice slightly lifts in a way that Barry’s proud to recognize as surprised. Even if everyone else is still out of his range of understanding, he’s getting better at reading their team leader. And it’s so weird seeing _Batman_ express emotions outside of his typical range of weary resignation to outright anger.

“No kryptonite,” Barry confirms. “I looked everywhere. Twice. And they even had a cool—like—I don’t know? Secret little room? Like a small compartment linked to a trap door under the rug in the wheelhouse. But all I found down there was some crack which, honestly? Is kind of disappointing. Who makes an entire trap door room and puts one of the most commonly trafficked drugs inside of it? I thought it would be something more exotic, like 4-Max or something. Or maybe—“

“Flash,” Bruce growls, and Barry halts, sheepish grin falling into place once he realizes that he’s gotten off topic again.

“Right. Sorry. Anyway, I checked all rooms including the secret one and didn’t find a single trace of kryptonite on board. Just drugs. Trust me, Batman. I know my drugs.” Barry falters, cheeks heating up beneath his mask as he frantically amends, “Not like I do a bunch of drugs! Just—like—my job, you know? The whole crime la—“

“ _Flash,_ ” Bruce says, tone more forceful this time, and Barry could actually die on the spot, because he’d almost straight up stated his normal human occupation right where anyone could hear it, and he’s starting to understand why Bruce has been keeping him away from the media.

“Sorry,” Barry squeaks, voice small. And maybe Bruce can tell that Barry’s embarrassed, or maybe he’s just quietly relieved that there isn’t any kryptonite making its way into the city, but Bruce visibly softens, rigid posture of his shoulders sinking into something more natural even though his frown stays in place.

“I believe you,” he explains. “And if that’s the case, we can leave to legal proceedings to the police.”

Barry goes to emphatically agree, but the world tilts at that instant, and it takes every ounce of willpower he has to stay on his feet, much less respond. Luckily, Victor lands next to him then, and Barry’s able to toss an arm up and over Victor’s shoulder in what he hopes he can pass off as a brotherly side lean or something. By the way that Bruce’s lips twitch (and the way Barry awkwardly has to twist his torso to accommodate for Victor’s extra height), Barry can tell that he must look pretty ridiculous, but that’s all the better, honestly. Anything to keep his near spill a secret.

“So,” Barry says, trying for conversational. “Anyone up for McDonald’s?”

And Bruce actually looks like he’s considering saying yes, which—full disclosure—would have probably made Barry’s entire life. But Victor suddenly stands taller, and as Barry’s arm falls back down to his side, he’s able to see Victor’s face go carefully blank in a way that makes all the alarms go off in Barry’s head.

“Cyborg,” Bruce says, a request issued as a command.

“There are reports of a fire in the left wing of the Gotham Children’s Hospital,” Victor states, tone steady and flat. “With the building’s current structural integrity, there’s a high risk of collapse. Part of the stairwell already has.” He closes his eyes, light flashing on his forehead. “There are fifteen civilians trapped. Two nurses, thirteen children. All on the fourth floor. The responder’s aren’t going to be able to make it up on time.”

Bruce looks at Barry then, steady gaze betraying none of the softness from moments before. “How are you with structure fires?”

And Barry’s entire body screams in protest, but there are lives at stake here. There are always lives at stake. 

“You know the answer to that, Batman.” Barry stretches out his legs, ignores the pounding in his chest and ears. “Abrasion-resistant. Heat-resistant. My suit could withstand re-entry into the atmosphere.”

“You know where the hospital is?”

“Not sure. Please don’t say east.”

“Big building off of 32nd.”

“Got it. I can do grid systems.”

“We can be there in fifteen,” Cyborg promises, rockets on his feet sputtering to life.

“If we’re lucky, I should be done by then.”

Barry hopes that sounded cool. Electricity ripples at is finger tips as he takes his pose, swallows down the terror rising in his throat, glances over at Bruce as though searching for an answer to a question that he doesn’t know how to ask. He tries anyway. “Save one?”

And Bruce nods, face solemn and strict and maybe the tiniest bit proud. But Barry’s already gone.  
  
\---  
  
He saves them. There’s some smoke in his lungs and soot caked into the creases of his suit along with the salt now and the father of the last child is uncomfortably sobbing into his clavicle while the wailing of sirens drowns out basically every other one of Barry’s senses, but he saves them. Part of the roof collapsed on his last trip down, and he twisted his ankle a bit awkwardly when he repositioned himself along the wall to avoid getting hit by falling plaster, but there are fifteen human beings—sixteen including himself—that could have died and are very much alive, so Barry doesn’t care.

“Thank you,” the father sobs out again, scrabbling at Barry’s suit for purchase. His little girl is sitting a few feet off to the right, breathing purified air through a mask as a paramedic guides her. The father leaves Barry then to kneel down next to her, and Barry idly wonders if maybe he should say something, but the words won’t come because it doesn’t feel real.

Somewhere off to his left, press members try to push past security, simultaneously snapping photos and calling out for interviews, and they don’t feel real either.

The only things that are real are the adrenaline in his blood, the twisted excitement-terror-pride of what he’s done. There’s a little boy pointing at him, chattering to his mother as she looks on in muted shock. Barry remembers the boy’s name—remembers all of the names that he could see printed on the doors in colorful block letters—and hopes that Jeremiah’s broken leg is doing alright. (Barry tried his hardest not to jostle it on the run down).

“Looks like we missed the party,” a voice suddenly cuts through the haze, and Barry flinches, hand on his chest, as he looks up to see Victor staring at him with clear amusement in his eye.

“You have _got_ to stop doing that,” Barry complains, but Victor just smirks.  
  
“You were spacing out, man.”  
  
“Yeah, well…” Barry grins shakily, wills himself not to tremor as the high comes crashing down all at once.  
  
“Status report,” Bruce orders.  
  
“No casualties,” Barry says. And that still makes his entire world spin. “Everyone’s fine. All fifteen. I—all fifteen of them, Bru—Batman.”  
  
Bruce goes to say something then, but he’s cut off as a kid—Julian, Barry thinks—presses past his legs, B-lining towards Barry to pull at his elbow.  
  
“That was so cool!” Julian yells, tugging insistently until Barry kneels down so that they’re leveled eye-to-eye. “You were like _fwwssshhh_ , and the lights were like _zzzaaakk_ and-and my little brother’s scared to talk to you because you’re so cool, but I told him I’d ask because I think you’re really, really nice and you’re really fast and it’s awesome!”  
  
Barry flounders momentarily, looking to Bruce for guidance. But Bruce just shrugs, gestures with a single hand as though telling Barry that it’s his problem to figure out.  
  
“You and your brother sound great, uhh, Kid,” Barry finally replies, lips twitching into a smile and chest filling with joy as Julian hollers with delight. “And I’d be happy to meet him.” He glances up at Bruce. “Provided that’s…okay?”  
  
“It’s _your_ scene, Flash,” Bruce gruffly replies. Barry’s smile gives way to a full-on grin as he takes it for the assent that it is and stands on unsteady legs to follow Julian over to his family.  
  
\---  
  
“You’re looking kind of rough, Bud.”  
  
It’s 7 AM, and Barry’s _feeling_ kind of rough. After the fire, he’d been passed from family to family, eager to please and even more eager to get to know the people he’d managed to help. Bruce and Victor hung around—in part to deal with the press and in part to humor the kids that inevitably recognized their hero personas—but for the most part, Barry had been left to his own devices (which. Never a great idea, but not one that resulted in any lasting damage, so it’s fine.)  
  
It’s not like he said anything wrong or bad. In fact, he’s really proud of how he carried himself, given his limited experience with human interaction. But he was so excited to talk to every family—to get to know as much as he could about Sarah’s soccer team and Dustin’s science experiments—that, when he finally checked the time, he was forced to make a hasty exit so that he could make it to his father’s visitation hours. And, in the process, he forgot that he needed to. You know. Eat.  
  
He’s really regretting it right about now.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Barry replies. “I had a long night.”  
  
“What, did you take a late night shift?” Henry teases, but Barry can hear the worry shadowing each word.  
  
_Yeah,_ Barry thinks. _At my secret superhero job._  
  
“Yeah,” he says instead. “But it’s no big deal. Just filling in for a friend. It’s not a frequent thing.”  
  
Henry visibly relaxes at that, but he’s still frowning when he says “you should really quit at least one of your jobs, Bare. A full time and two part-timers is still too much. You’re going to run yourself into the ground at this rate.”  
  
It’s funny he says that, because Barry’s vision blacks out again, something that’s becoming alarmingly too familiar as of late. But it’s still fine. He’s not unconscious, and nobody’s died today, so it’s great. Plus, he works the lowest level at a crime lab. When he gets to work, he’ll just have to sit in a desk and sort through case files for a few hours until it’s been reasonably long enough for him to leave for his lunch break.  
  
“New topic,” Barry interjects, slamming his hands down on the table. “I actually have friends now.”  
  
And that’s the end of that. Henry briefly presses for more information about Barry’s health, but Barry’s easily able to pull him out of those conversations with stories about how Diana, (his “friend from Greece”), is supposed to return sometime this week after having taken an extended break to visit her family in the aftermath of the Steppenwolf disaster, or about how Griffin (one of Barry’s coworkers) accidentally spilled an entire packet of soy sauce onto his keyboard the other day and actually tried to lick it up when he panicked. And sure, Barry’s starting to sweat a little, and his hands keep tremoring on his lap whenever he doesn’t pay attention to them, but his dad doesn’t know, so it’s good. It’s perfect.  
  
“Take care of yourself,” Henry ends the visit with, face pinching up in a way that indicates that he’s upset that he can’t physically leave to enforce his command. Barry’s received that look a lot recently.  
  
“Yeah, well. I could say the same to you,” Barry shoots back, attempting to sit up straight as his head pounds in objection. “I love you, dad.”  
  
“I love you, too, Barry.”  
  
And Barry stands up then as he notices the guards coming their way, unwilling to watch his father be dragged off by force after such a long night. With another wave through the glass, Barry takes a step back—and immediately stumbles as his legs conspire against him. He catches himself against the slat separating his visitation window from the one to its left, makes sure that his dad didn’t see the fumble. (It’ll do no good worrying him now.)  
  
Barry’s in the clear. He’s okay. He’s not worried. This is fine.  
  
Get to work. Go to lunch. One small goal at a time.  
  
\---  
  
When Barry Allen steps into the crime lab—two minutes late despite his (second) best efforts--he very rapidly learns that Alex Walter, one of the leading analysts, is on a war path.  
  
The other rookies are gathered in the break room when Barry arrives, huddled around Walter as he fumes about one thing or another, vein in his neck prominently sticking out from beneath the collar of his white button-down. Later, Barry will learn that there was supposedly a mix-up of sorts—a physical case file for a crime investigation 5 years in the making that seemingly disappeared over night—but at first glance, all he sees are about nine terrified coworkers and one very angry man with a rapidly receding hairline.  
  
Then, all he sees is that same very angry man up close, bearing down on his personal space with the same intensity that Arthur did after he sat on the Lasso of Truth.  
  
“Where have you been?” Walter snarls. Barry opens his mouth to respond, but closes it when he realizes that ‘at the prison visiting my father’ probably isn’t something that he should be saying at his job, where they turn suspected criminals _into_ prisoners. (Besides. Last time he said that, he ruined lunch with one of his coworkers.)  
  
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” Barry finally stutters out, forcing himself to stand straight. He bites his cheek before his next lie, trying not to laugh at the injustice of it all. “I, uh, accidentally slept in.”  
  
He hasn’t slept for 27 hours. Comedy gold.  
  
What follows next is what Barry can only assume is a ritual roast fest as Walter shouts down at him for the next thirty minutes. For the most part, Barry’s completely spaced out, focused more on remaining on his feet, but from what he can catch of the one-sided beat down, topics broached upon include Barry’s ineptitude as both a forensic scientist _and_  human being, the general lack of qualification it must take to work here for how stupid all of the rookies are, and how bad Barry smells (which is actually a fair point, provided he hasn’t been able to take a shower yet and probably reeks of salt water, smoke, and sweat.) In the end, Walter steps back, shouts at the group one last time, and stomps out of the room, shouldering Barry on his way out for good measure.  
  
“I’m so sorry, dude,” Jacob, the guy that once caught Barry with his arm stuck in the vending machine, says. “I swear he doesn’t mean any of it. You’re probably one of the only people who actually gives a shit about working here.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Barry responds. He hadn’t caught most of Walter’s rant, anyway. He wonders if he should prank Walter regardless—try to boost morale by putting salt in his coffee or something—but in the end, he decided to save that for another day. Then, because Barry never knows when to shut his mouth, he adds “I mean, obviously it’s not fine, because he’s clearly upset, but it’s fine in the sense that I don’t really know what he even said because there was this stain on his tie, like a little off the center, and I couldn’t figure out if it was ink or soy sauce or maybe A1 and I was kind of…” trails off then, voice growing smaller as he notices the confused look Jacob is sending his way, “…distracted.”  
  
“You’re weird, man,” Jacob says, not unkindly.  
  
“Yeah,” Barry concedes, defeated. “I know.”  
  
He spends the next two hours getting filled in about the missing case file and helping search for it with the rest of the rookies until it’s discovered buried underneath the work piled up on the edge of Walter’s desk. Walter’s clearly upset about _that_ , too, if his stony glare is anything to go by, and when he catches eyes with Barry from across the room, his sharp “ _what are you looking at_?” tells Barry that he isn’t going to be getting an apology (not that he was looking for one in the first place.)  
  
Still, everyone’s obviously uncomfortable and angry, so when Walter takes a sip from his coffee a moment later, Barry is the only one that is not surprised when he sputters and coughs at the sudden taste of salt, face twisting up into confused outrage. Barry is also the only one that does not laugh, but he does feel his feet shift out from under him, and even after he steadies himself, he can barely hear Jacob’s concerned “you alright, dude?” through the vertigo.  
  
“Perfect,” he says. Reconsiders. “Really, really hungry.”  
  
“Well it’s about time for lunch anyway. Wanna come grab a bite to eat with the gang?”  
  
Barry isn’t sure who the "gang" is, really, but he is more than eager to work on more human interaction, especially if food is involved. But before he can answer, he feels his phone vibrate twice in succession, and his empty stomach sinks as he realizes the implications.  
  
“I might have to uh, reschedule,” Barry apologizes, fumbling around his pocket so that he can see what the text reads. “I think I’m getting a call from my other job. I should probably check that out. I—it’s just—it’s work, you know—”  
  
“Whatever you say, man,” Jacob says. “I’ll leave a note about where we decide to go on your desk if you figure out you can make it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Barry mutters. “I hope I make it.”  
  
He means so much more than making it to lunch.  
  
\---  
  
Barry doesn’t feel right.  
  
It’s supposedly a domestic terrorist attack—a bomb threat _again_ , which is something that Barry desperately wishes he were surprised by. But ever since Superman’s resurrection, domestic terrorist attacks have been growing increasingly more common, as though people believe that they can persuade the League to dump Clark through meaningless acts of violence. And Barry’s upset, because it’s so exciting to do this—to, to help people, to use his powers to save others—but when it’s other humans causing so much turmoil, it’s hard to rationalize. And-  
  
Oh, God. Barry doesn’t feel right.  
  
The electricity was out in the building when he got there. Someone blew out the fuse, probably wanted to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible before dropping the news that there was a bomb hidden somewhere inside. And Bruce had asked Barry if he could get the circuits running again and of course Barry could (he brought some sort of alien box from outer space back to life before), so he didn’t say no, even as his shoulders shook and his legs grew weak and his heart pounded in his throat, making him choke on each breath. Now, the power is on, there are people spilling out of the building by the dozens, and Barry’s searching and searching and searching—but he can’t find it. He can’t find the bomb.  
  
And he doesn’t feel right.  
  
(Did he say that before?)  
  
There are forty-eight floors in this building, and Barry’s worked his way up thirty-two of them, ripping through each room, tearing out the cabinets and drawers in his haste to find the hidden explosive. Victor’s been watching the security footage, helping people down from the higher floors and scanning the rooms to see if he can locate anything out of place, but he doesn’t know what they’re looking for: what element is the bomb based off of, what type of incendiary device is it, where is it _where is it_?  
  
(And Barry doesn’t— He doesn’t.)  
  
\---  
  
There’s a lady in room 4428, and she has a gun.  
  
In retrospect, Barry shouldn’t have stopped. He should have kept speeding along, should have disarmed her and moved her to the bottom floor before asking a single question. But Barry can’t think straight at the moment (doesn’t feel-), and when he spots the gun, he freezes in place, electricity crackling around him and disappearing back into his suit.  
  
“Why..?” he asks. He doesn’t know where he’s going with this. “Why do you…”  
  
“There isn’t a bomb,” she says, and her face is impassive, but her voice shakes. “There isn’t—I didn’t know how else to reach you.”  
  
“Reach me?” Barry asks, and he’s not even a part of his own body anymore. He’s watching the interaction from afar, spectating from a distance, confused and tired and all wrong. “I’m not a leader, or a certified hero, even, if that’s what you were… uh—I just push people sometimes. Or pull. It’s really situational.”  
  
“I just needed to talk to any one of you. Any member of the _Justice League_.” The sudden scorn in her tone doesn’t make her sound any less terrified, but it does make Barry marginally more uneasy, as though that were a thing that he ever considered to be possible. “I needed to tell you. I needed this.”  
  
“What do you need to tell,” Barry swallows back bile, and he doesn’t feel—(you know.) “What do you want from me? From us?”  
  
“Look at that photo,” the lady commands. She gestures with the gun, and Barry’s gaze tracks to follow its every movement until he’s staring straight at the lone picture frame on her desk. The photo depicts what Barry can only assume to be the same woman, her hair in a loose ponytail and her nose crinkled as she grins into the camera. To her left, a younger man is pulling her against his side, same dark eyes boring out of the frame as he rests his head on her shoulder.  
  
“That’s your…” Barry trails off. He has a sneaking suspicion that he knows where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.  
  
“That’s my son,” the lady—Sylvia Watkinson, according to her desk plaque—confirms. “Was my son,” she corrects. Barry’s hands would be quaking if he wasn’t clenching them into tight fists at his sides. “Do you want to know what happened to him?”  
  
Barry honestly doesn’t, but he’s pretty sure that’s the wrong answer, so he doesn’t speak, just stares Sylvia down and tries to keep it together as the room blurs at the edges once more.  
  
“Figures you wouldn’t,” Sylvia snorts, toying with the trigger as she moves from the side of the desk to the center of the room, positioning herself an arm’s length away. “But I didn’t want him to die, either. So I guess we’ll both just have to be unhappy.”  
  
She glances back at the photo, and Barry uses the time to ponder his options. But he doesn’t know what to do here. (Does he grab and go? Try to defuse?) And he still doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel right at all.  
  
“His name was Michael,” Sylvia says, “and he was twenty-three years old when Superman killed him.”  
  
Barry shakes his head at that, regrets it immensely as it makes his vision black out for the hundredth time today, this time with the added bonus of making his stomach actively try to punch its way out of his body.  
  
“No,” he struggles out through the light-headedness. “No, he wouldn’t—Superman saved the world.”  
  
“Half a city, leveled. Thousands of lives, gone. All so Superman could fight one of his enemies on a planet that isn’t even his own.”  
  
“No,” Barry protests, but his mind is racing and he remembers the news and oh. Oh, God. She isn’t wrong. There were so many people lost in Metropolis. So, so many. But that wasn’t Superman’s fault. “Superman is _good_. He—he saves people.”  
  
“ _Then why didn’t he save my son?_ ” Sylvia snarls, all of her previous fear gone in an instant, and Barry doesn’t feel— “Why was Michael’s entire city burned to the ground?” She raises the gun to point the barrel into Barry’s chest and Barry doesn’t even try to move, doesn’t respond as his heart hammers against his ribcage. (He can move faster than a bullet when he’s at his best. Maybe not now. But when he’s at his best.)  
  
Sylvia pushes the barrel further into his skin, eyes wild and desperate and furious.  
  
“He’s a time bomb, and he’s dangerous, and if you’re so concerned about _justice,_ where is mine? Where is _Michael’s_?”  
  
Her voice breaks then, falls apart into messy tears that Barry doesn’t know how to handle. His heart hurts for her, but he can’t understand people at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. Still. He has to try.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, words soft and scared and sincere even as his world oscillates in and out of orbit. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I wish—I wish I could fix it. But what you’re doing—this won’t change anything.”  
  
Sylvia sobs harder at that, grips onto his shoulder with one hand as she lets the arm with the gun drop to her side. Barry wants to relax, but there’s a tension in the air that makes him feel like he’s got his head underwater, that makes the voices through his comm come out thin and warbled.  
  
“I hate you,” Sylvia cries, teeth bared, tears spilling down her cheeks, “I hate you all so much.”  
  
Then, she whips her arm up to her own head, and she pulls the trigger.  
  
\---  
  
The shot goes off into the ceiling, and Sylvia ends up crushed in Barry’s arms, thrashing and screaming and wailing for all his efforts.  
  
“I hate you,” she keeps saying, shrieking almost. “I hate you, _I hate you._ ”  
  
“ _Flash, answer the damn comm right now or I’m sending the police force in after you_ ,” Bruce says through the link. Barry holds Sylvia closer to his chest, sinks down to the floor with her, wonders if the shaking in his shoulders is being caused by Sylvia’s struggling or if it’s just happening on its own.  
  
“Perimeter clear,” he croaks.  
  
“ _Flash? What’s going on_?”  
  
“There’s no bomb,” Barry says, and everything is cotton in his head, sand in his mouth, tremor in his fingers. “There’s no bomb.”  
  
He doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t _feel_ right. He doesn’t—  
  
\---  
  
Barry goes back to work, despite everything.  
  
When Bruce arrived on scene, Sylvia was still shouting into Barry’s neck, trying to wrangle herself free as Barry pinned her against himself. The gun was on the floor, having been kicked to the edge of the room by Barry the moment that he pulled it out of her hands, and it didn’t take long for Bruce to piece together what had happened once he was able to understand the nearly unintelligible words being screeched right into Barry’s ear.  
  
“I didn’t know what to do,” Barry had said, looking up at Bruce from his seated position on the ground. Sylvia had shouted again, and Barry blinked, gaze distant. “I think she hates us.”  
  
“You did the right thing,” Bruce had responded. The police filtered in after him, one stooping to jot something down about the gun before picking it up with gloved hands and placing it into a paper bag, at which point Bruce nudged Barry with a foot. “Come on, Kid. Let go now.”  
  
“Oh,” Barry said, still dazed, but quickly coming back to himself. And _oh_. “Right.”

He was up in an instant, handing Sylvia off to Bruce with clumsy arms and a weak, weak grin. “Right. You got it, Batman. I—uh. I—“ he had trailed off again, reeling for the words (because Sylvia hated them, hated them because they murdered her son, and there’s still something so wrong here, there’s-)  
  
“It’s alright,” Bruce had said. “Go wait with Cyborg. I’ll handle this. We can debrief later.”  
  
Barry had nodded. Stopped. Thought it through.  
  
“Actually,” Barry said. “I’m supposed to be at work.” He shuffled from one foot to the other, tried to ignore the way that the atmosphere buzzed around him, charged yet muted, like he was at a concert with his earplugs in too tight. “Could we—could I debrief this evening?”  
  
Bruce’s frown deepened, but he granted Barry’s request.  
  
“Six PM, usual meeting place. Don’t be late.”  
  
A grin, stronger this time, even though it felt like his body wasn’t his own.  
  
“No worries, Batman. I’ll, uh. I’ll be there in a Flash.”  
  
And now Barry’s walking into work again, but he feels like something is looming, and it’s making the hairs on his neck stand up on end. He sits down at his desk, notices the note stuck to his computer screen—“Went to Big Belly Burger on S. Avenue because Margaret’s a tyrant. Hit us up.”—and his stomach sinks as he realizes that he’s got another three minutes until his break is done and that he really doesn’t have it in him to go running anywhere right about now.  
  
But it’s good. It’s over. Bruce won’t call him while he’s at work unless the situation is desperate, and if he asks nicely enough (begs), he’s sure he can get Victor to hack into the vending machine and give him all the snacks he needs to last the rest of his shift.  
  
With that new plan firmly in place, Barry pushes himself up from his desk, pulls his phone out of his pocket to send the text out to his teammate, startles as he suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Hey, man,” Jacob says, and it takes Barry a moment to recognize that a conversation is now taking place. “How’d the call with your other job go? You don’t look too good.”  
  
“I—It was. Great,” Barry stammers out, looks down at the phone again and winces when the letters seem to smear over one another. “I’m just—it’s been a day, you know?”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Jacob laughs, gently ushering Barry back towards his seat. “But seriously, man. Sit down for a sec and let me grab you a Gatorade or something. You look like you’re about to pass out.”  
  
“It’s—I don’t, uh, I—” Barry stammers again, not knowing how to vocalize how vital it is that he receive a mass amount of food _right now, right this instant_ without sounding crazy.  
  
“Woah, woah,” Jacob says, more urgently this time. “Calm down. I got you. Barry, look at me. Barry? _Barry_!”  
  
But at one point, the audio cuts out like someone’s just hit the mute button on life, and although Barry can see Jacob’s mouth moving, all he can hear is the white noise inside his own head. And it doesn’t feel right.  
  
“Do you smell burning popcorn?” Barry asks.  
  
Then everything goes dark.  
  
\---  
  
When Barry wakes up, he is immediately made aware of four things.  
  
One: He’s not at work anymore, as made evident by both the blessed lack of fluorescent lighting and the overall grandiose of the room that he has been relocated to. Whereas his normal workspace is very scientific—all white vinyl sheets and sharp edges—this room is almost warm, what with its wooden floors and dark red rugs and massive bookcases lining the walls. The only off-putting thing about it is how completely immaculate it looks, like it was designed for human comfort and then never used. Which leads Barry to his second discovery.  
  
Two: He’s at Wayne Manor.  
  
Okay, maybe that’s kind of mean. It’s not like Bruce doesn’t know how to relax and chill in his own living room (or, at least Barry is assuming this is a living room with how massive it is), but—no. No, that’s exactly what Barry’s saying. Bruce doesn’t know how to relax and chill in his own living room. And it isn’t a bad thing! Or. Well, it’s kind of a bad thing, because Bruce deserves to be happy and comfortable, but he’s so dead-set on justice and brooding and trying to be untouchable that it’s hard to even get a smile out of the guy. And Bruce has done so much for the world, for the League—for Barry personally—that the fact Barry’s able to tell this is his living room by how unlived in it looks is kind of upsetting. But maybe it isn’t any of Barry’s business. He’s always been so bad about knowing when he’s crossing a line. Although, Barry can only assume that Bruce would tell him is he’s being too… _Barry._  
  
Speaking of Bruce.  
  
Three: Bruce is here, in a chair across from the couch Barry is lying on, and he isn’t happy.  
  
“Alfred,” Bruce says the minute that Barry’s eyes lock onto his own. “Bring it in.”  
  
Barry blinks, confused, struggles to sit up as Bruce’s unnerving gaze follows him the entire time.  
  
“Uh,” Barry says intelligently, propping himself up on the arm of the sofa.  
  
Alfred walks into the room then, pushing a cart forward until it’s at the end of the coffee table that separates Barry from his leader. When Alfred lifts the sheet off of the trolley, Barry can only take it in with as sense of mute surprise and confusion: the four pizza boxes, bucket of KFC, array of drinks, what must be one of everything off the menu from the Chinese place that Barry once eyed at the end of the street.  
  
“We’re going to have a conversation,” Bruce says. Barry can’t tell if it’s an explanation or a threat. Either way, he’s scared.  
  
(Four: Barry Allen is going to die.)  
  
\---  
  
“How do you feel, Barry?”  
  
Barry’s about 99% sure that it’s a trick question, but he tries to answer it to the best of his abilities anyway, tearing his gaze away from the food cart so that he can—not exactly look Bruce in the eyes, because Barry always finds looking people directly in the eyes so uncomfortable—but at least indicate to Bruce that he is paying as much of his attention as possible to the conversation at hand.  
  
“Tired,” he admits. He doesn’t feel as wrong anymore, though. “Kind of groggy. Starving. Can I eat?”  
  
“I didn’t order this food so that it could just sit there,” Bruce gruffly replies, and Barry takes that as his opportunity to swipe a pizza box and a bottle of chocolate milk off the top tray. As he reaches out, his hand falters when he notices the bright blue Band-Aid on his suspiciously bare forearm.  
  
“What—” he starts, looks around for his jacket as he flops back down on the couch with the pizza box on his lap.  
  
“Alfred’s getting your jacket cleaned,” Bruce offers. “And that Band-Aid’s from where you were hooked up to the IV.”  
  
“IV?” Barry asks through his first bite of pizza. He doesn’t know how Bruce knew that he likes jalapeños, but he isn’t about to question it now. “Huh. It’s a good thing I was unconscious then.” Barry catches Bruce’s raised eyebrows, quickly goes to elaborate. “I don’t like needles.”  
  
Bruce sighs. “Of course you don’t.”  
  
For a few seconds, neither of them speak, Barry too busy ingesting half a pizza into his mouth at once and Bruce watching him do so in a way that would make Barry subconscious if he weren’t so hungry.  
  
“Hypoglycemia,” Bruce suddenly says, leaning forward then so that his elbows are propped on his knees. “That’s what the physician said. But I’d call it recklessness.” Bruce scowls. “You had a seizure, Barry.”  
  
Maybe it’s the words themselves or maybe it’s the way that Bruce says them, tired and angry and something that Barry hesitates to call upset, but Barry freezes mid-bite, lets the last piece of pizza fall back into the box with a dull thump.  
  
“A seizure,” Barry repeats slowly, surprised. At least that explains how uneasy he’d been feeling for a better part of the day. “It’s—It’s never gotten so bad that I’ve had a _seizure_ before.”  
  
“ _Before?_ ” Bruce responds, voice frigid, and Barry scrambles to mitigate.  
  
“Well, yeah! I mean—I didn’t always know that it took so much energy to use the Speed Force, and I didn’t always know how much I needed to eat to keep using it, and—and yeah, there was a period of trial and error where I would pass out every few days or so, but I never—”  
  
Bruce interjects again, “Every few days?”  
  
“What do you want me to say, Bruce?” Barry asks desperately. “I’m _sorry_? Because yeah, I am—I’m sorry you got pulled into this today or whatever, but—wait a second. Wait. How did you get pulled into this? Oh, God, Jacob didn’t use my phone to contact you, did he? Do we have to kill him now? I really don’t want to have to kill him, he’s a good guy, and I’m sure he can keep a secret, and—”  
  
“Barry,” Bruce cuts him off, exasperated, and Barry’s mouth clicks shut as Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose before recollecting himself. “No. Your coworker did not call me with your phone, he doesn’t know our secret identities, and we don’t have to _kill him_.” His scowl darkens. “And if you don’t change my name in your contact list from ‘Batsy’ to ‘Bruce Wayne’ or just ‘Wayne’, I’m going to take your phone away from you.”  
  
“Ooh, that’s embarrassing. I’m sorry that you found out about that,” Barry admits, grimacing. “But if Jacob didn’t call you, how—”  
  
“Master Wayne is your emergency contact for work, Mister Allen.”  
  
Barry grips onto the couch arm, flinching back in surprise as Bruce shoots a look Alfred’s way.  
  
“My apologies, Mister Allen. I had no intentions of sneaking up on you.”  
  
“No,” Barry wheezes.  “No, I—I’m sorry I forgot you were here. I’ve been out of it today.”  
  
“Indeed you have, Mister Allen. Might I suggest trying the Chicken Lo Mein next?”  
  
“That you might,” Barry laughs, breath stuttered as he stuffs the rest of the pizza in his mouth and reaches for the offered take out container. “And are you really my emergency contact, Bruce? I didn’t even know I had emergency contacts.”  
  
Bruce sighs again, shakes his head. “Yes. I am your emergency contact.”  
  
Barry grins. “Not that I’m not super grateful—because I completely am—but why?”  
  
Bruce takes a measured breath, runs a hand aggressively through his hair. Barry’s grin falls.  
  
“Obviously you need someone to look after you, since you refuse to take care of yourself.”  
  
“The pot calling the kettle black,” Alfred retorts. Bruce shoots him another meaningful look, this one more withering than the last.  
  
“Alfred, _out_.”  
  
Alfred complies, but not before leaning over to whisper a conspiratorial, “He’s just grumpy because you worried him,” Barry’s way. Barry tries to smile, because he’s grateful, honestly, but Bruce looks more angry than he does concerned, and Barry’s always hated having other people upset with him (a tragedy, really, because all he seems to do is upset others.) Then, Alfred’s out of the room, and it’s just Barry and Bruce, and Bruce spends an uncomfortable amount of time just staring at Barry until the speedster blurts the first thing that comes to mind.  
  
“I’m sorry.” He scratches at the Band-Aid on his arm, readjusts the Lo Mein on his lap. “I’m really, honestly sorry. I just—everything’s been getting away from me since Steppenwolf. It’s…it’s an adjustment period, I swear.”  
  
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” Bruce answers, and Barry wishes (not for the first time) that Bruce didn’t have to be so cryptic.  
  
“Trying to figure what out?” Barry asks.  
  
Bruce crosses his arms, leans back into his chair. “You never stop talking,” he begins, and it’s like a physical blow to the gut for how quickly it makes Barry wilt. “You can take a thirty second conversation and turn it into a novella—complained nonstop about being scared and hungry the day we formed the League—but when it gets to the point that you’re about to keel over and pass out, you make a passing comment about McDonald’s and then let it die. I don’t understand you, Barry Allen.”  
  
“I don’t,” Barry starts, and this feels very much like the moment before he lost all of his other prospective friends in the past, which makes him want to throw up (because he tried so hard this time, tried to understand his teammates in a way that he could never understand normal people, and of course they can’t understand him. He can’t understand him half the time). “I can’t—”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Bruce demands.  
  
“I thought I could handle it,” Barry replies.  
  
“But why did you think you had to?”  
  
“Because—because the world isn’t going to wait just because I’m a little hungry!”  
  
The lights in the room flicker, power surging and resettling as Barry’s voice breaks. And oh. This is mortifying, actually. This is a nightmare. Bruce still looks so angry, and Barry’s chest feels tight, and everything’s so overwhelming.  
  
“I tried to keep up, but—but I’m not _used_ to running missions. I used to just kind of run into crime and deal with it as it came, but now there’s actually a—a demand for superheroes, and I want to be a part of this so, so badly, so I just—I tried to make time that didn’t exist. And it didn’t work, obviously. And I’m sorry. I swear, I’d never respond to a mission if I thought that I’d pass out in the middle of it. And I _didn’t_. So.” Barry swallows hard, tries to organize his scattered thoughts, but he can hardly do that when he isn’t three seconds away from breaking down. “I didn’t want to—to…”  
  
“To what? Be kicked out of the League?” Bruce’s tone is biting, but when Barry drops his gaze to his own hands, it takes on an edge of disbelief. “Do you actually think that we would drop you for needing a breather?”  
  
“Well,” Barry squeaks, “I mean. Yeah?”  
  
Bruce pauses, face stony and distant.

"Unbelievable," he mutters. He wipes a hand down his face, talks to the ceiling. “Actually unbelievable.”  
  
“I’m sorry!” Barry says again, a touch frantic. “It’s just—I didn’t make myself into a great hero like you, and I’m not superhuman like Clark or Diana or Arthur or Victor. I’m—I’m just a college kid who got struck by lightning. I’m not, I’m not a _real_ hero. Not the way you guys are. So I assumed—”  
  
“What was that little boy’s name?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Barry reels, head snapping up in his shock.  
  
“That little boy that interrupted us earlier. At the hospital. What was his name?”  
  
“Julian,” Barry answers on autopilot. “But that doesn’t—”  
  
“And his brother?”  
  
“Uhh, Phillip.”  
  
“What about that girl? The one whose father cried all over you. And then all over me.”  
  
“Her name was Antoinette. But—”  
  
“That right there,” Bruce cuts him off. “That right there proves you’re more of a hero than anything else.”  
  
Barry frowns, shaking his head. “What, because I can remember some kids’ names? Bruce, that doesn’t—it’s not—”  
  
“Barry,” Bruce interrupts, and his voice is so serious that the words get stuck in Barry’s throat, silencing him for possibly the first time ever. “If we’re going by superpowers, then you’re a hero by textbook definition. But _that_ —your capacity for empathy, the fact that you care so much—that’s what makes a real hero. You were upset by the last woman in the office building. Why?”  
  
“Sylvia?” Barry says, breathless. And her name alone makes something shift uncomfortably in his chest, makes him want to curl into himself, tuck himself into the couch and hide away. “I guess—she was so hurt, and she lost so much, and we—we couldn’t help her. I couldn’t help her. Not even now. And I hate it.”  
  
Bruce looks at Barry, something unreadable flitting across his expression. Then, he laughs—or at least does a parody of a laugh—the sound dry and incredulous.  
  
“I watched the security footage,” Bruce offers, as though it’s a suitable explanation. “This lady held a gun to your chest, and you were upset that you couldn’t help her. Don’t you sit here and tell me that isn’t a hero move right there, because if you can save a woman that’s threatening to kill you and still think you’re nothing more than some dumb college kid, then I don’t know what that makes the rest of us.”  
  
Barry opens his mouth then to speak, but he can’t find a single coherent sentence among the mess, just fragments of random phrases that he can’t even begin to decipher. Finally, he just lets the thoughts go, takes another bite of his Lo Mein to occupy his hands.  
  
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Barry asks after he’s ripped through most of the container. He only realizes that his traitor mouth actually said the words out loud when Bruce’s sharp gaze snaps back to him, cutting him straight to his soul. “I—uh,” Barry backpedals, “Oh, man. That was rude. I’m so sorry. I just meant that I didn’t think the Batman would be so big on pep talks, and I know I can be pretty annoying, and you’re going all this way to make me feel better and, and—wait, where are you going?”  
  
Bruce walks away from the table, making his way towards the bookshelf back behind his chair.  
  
“Jesus. Relax. I’m just getting a drink,” he calls over his shoulder when Barry begins apologizing again. Bruce pours himself a glass of some dusky amber drink that Barry is sure costs more than his entire life earnings, then downs half of it in one gulp as he carries the unlabeled bottle back over to the coffee table. As he sits down again, Barry can clearly hear the muttered “You’re ridiculous, Kid,” but he elects not to comment on it.  
  
Instead, he finishes off his Lo Mein, reaches over to grab another container of what he assumes to be stir fry (not that it matters) and keeps talking, like he does best.  
  
“Do you just, like, have alcohol in every room of your home?”  
  
He says it through a mouthful of rice, which makes Bruce’s face twist up in some sort of way, but the beef’s too good for Barry to regret it, and the panic-pressure in his chest deflates as Bruce lets it be.  
  
“That’s none of your business,” Bruce mumbles instead, finishing off his drink and pouring another glass. “More important question: How haven’t you been able to find the time to eat? If you can rip through food this fast, I’m surprised you haven’t just been eating between each mission. They don’t usually overlap the way they did today.”  
  
Barry shrugs as he inhales the last bit of stir fry and grabs the sweet and sour next.  
  
“I haven’t really had the time between missions. My longest break was like four hours long, and that was three days ago. I probably should have used that time to eat instead of sleep, yeah, but. You know. Hind-sight’s 20/20.”  
  
“Four hours?” Bruce repeats, eyes narrowing. “What are you even doing that takes up so much of your time?”  
  
Barry sets down the empty container, adding it to the rapidly growing pile on the coffee table. He narrows his own eyes in response, gesturing at Bruce with some chopsticks as he reaches blindly for the next one and fires back, “You know basically everything about all of us, Bruce. You knew I had emergency contacts at the crime lab before I knew I had emergency contacts at the crime lab.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So you know I’m working, like, three jobs right now.”  
  
Bruce sets the glass down with perhaps a little more force than necessary, making Barry wince and nearly choke on his bite of fried pork.  
  
“Wait. Still?” Bruce asks, and okay. Apparently he didn’t know. “I thought that you quit the part time jobs.”  
  
“I quit one of them,” Barry offers. “To make room for my job-job. But why would I quit all three?”  
  
“Because of your ‘ _job-job_.’” Bruce snipes. “The one I wrote a letter of recommendation for. Don’t you want to work forensics?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Barry concedes, finally popping open his chocolate milk. “But I usually eat like $200 worth of food a day—which, yeah, I obviously haven’t been doing, recently, but you get my point—and I still have _thousands_ in student loans to pay off, and—and you’re really starting to sound like my dad, you know that?”  
  
Barry takes a gulp of his chocolate milk, misses the exact moment that Bruce half-chokes on his own drink.  
  
“So, yeah," Barry concludes, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I can’t just—”  
  
“Quit your other jobs,” Bruce grumbles. He coughs roughly, and Barry doesn’t understand how, but Bruce still manages to make it look cool. “That isn’t me finishing your sentence. Quit your other jobs, focus on the crime lab.”  
  
Barry opens the second box of pizza, frowns in bewilderment as he picks up the first slice.  
  
“I know I can get kind of annoying to listen to, but I _literally_ just said why I can’t do that.”  
  
“I heard you,” Bruce huffs, and even though neither Bruce’s tone nor inflection change in the slightest, Barry feels chastised, which is both impressive and alarming. “But it isn’t up for negotiation. Quit your part time jobs and just leave the details to me.”  
  
Barry jabs at Bruce with his half-eaten slice of pizza. “Student loans, Bruce. I don’t want to be in debt forever.”  
  
“And you won’t be,” Bruce shoots back, “if you just leave. The details. To me.”  
  
Barry’s face darkens. Lights up in realization, jaw going slack as he connects the dots.  
  
“Bruce, you don’t—you can’t mean,” he shakes his head. “You can’t just pay off my loans for me.”  
  
“Actually, I can,” Bruce retorts, and maybe he’s feeling a little smug or maybe he’s had more to drink than Barry remembers (which isn’t too unreasonable of an assumption to make, Barry thinks, as he watches Bruce knock back another glass), but Bruce tacks on, “I’m rich, remember? That’s my superpower.”  
  
“Yeah, I mean no, I mean—yeah you have money,” Barry stammers, “but you can’t just use it on me like that. It isn’t—it doesn’t feel right?”  
  
“Listen,” Bruce says firmly. He goes to fill up another glass, and Barry idly wonders if this is his normal behavior or if Barry is somehow single-handedly turning the Batman into an alcoholic. Either way, he isn’t thrilled. “Clark tried to kill me, and I bought a bank for him. The least I can do is pay off some loans for a kid that I pulled into the apocalypse.”  
  
Barry adds the empty pizza box to the collection of other empty containers, rests his elbows on his knees so that he can steeple his fingers underneath his chin.  
  
“Uhh, in case you forgot, I was willing to join you before you even finished your sentence,” Barry objects. “I wasn’t pulled into anything.”  
  
Bruce downs another half of his glass, runs a hand over his face. (Yeah. It’s definitely Barry.)  
  
“Okay,” Bruce growls. “Alright. If you won’t quit your jobs because I told you to, then at least do it for the team. You quit one job for your dad, right? Now quit one for us. And one for yourself, while you’re at it.”  
  
“I won’t let them affect my missions anymore,” Barry promises. “So why—”  
  
“This isn’t about the damn missions!”  
  
Barry’s arm freezes from where it’s poised for the bucket of KFC, and his breath freezes too, hovering somewhere in his chest where it most certainly does not belong. Because Bruce looks so terribly _human_ right now, hair messy from where he’s run his hands through it and eyes so dark and exhausted and shirt partway unbuttoned, undone tie dangling at either side of his neck. And of course Barry has always known that Bruce is human, but it’s so weird to see Bruce just let it happen—so weird to see him let his guard drop so completely. (And Barry doesn’t deserve to see this, he thinks. He’s crossed a line again, always crosses so many lines because he just doesn’t know when to stop.)  
  
“Listen closely, because I am never repeating these words again, and in the future, I will deny having ever said them,” Bruce warns, and Barry can only nod, bringing his arm back to the side of his body just so he can cross is over his chest. Bruce nods once, appraisingly, then crosses his own arms in response, cup of amber fluid nearly splashing over the edge of the glass and onto his sleeve.  
  
“You’re important to this team, Barry Allen—and don’t,” he cuts Barry off before Barry can begin, “don’t interrupt me.” He waits until he’s sure that Barry isn’t going to intercede.  
  
“Victor’s been asking about you since the last mission,” Bruce begins again, setting his glass on the table. “He’s been asking since the harbor, actually. He’s been worried. Thought you were running yourself too thin. God knows why he thought _I_ could do anything to stop you.” Barry’s ears heat up at that and he ducks his head, in part embarrassed and in part touched. But Bruce isn’t done. “And Diana adores you. Keeps telling me she wishes she could show you off to her sisters, proof that men have the capacity to be kind. Clark only has good things to say about you, and you know how personally he takes it when one of us is injured,” Bruce clears his throat, glances away for an instant before hesitantly tagging on, “and I’m not… completely unaffected by whether you live or die.”  
  
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Barry half jokes through the sentiment clogging his throat. Then, because he can’t help it, “what about Arthur?”  
  
“What _about_ Arthur?” Bruce echoes back. “Hell if I know. Who cares? He’s an asshole.”  
  
Barry laughs, the sound sharp and delighted, and Bruce blows out of his nose, lips pulling into the beginning of a smirk despite his best efforts to remain impassive. Then, as Barry catches his breath, Bruce rises to his feet, carries his bottle back over to the bookshelf and returns to stand at the end of the coffee table.  
  
“My point being,” Bruce grumbles, “I don’t give a shit about whether you unwillingly pass out at a mission or unwillingly pass out at home. We don’t want you unwillingly passing out _anywhere_. So quit your part timers, let me handle it, and keep eating. You nearly gave your coworker a heart attack.”  
  
“I--okay,” Barry concedes, snatching up the bucket of KFC. “I’ll quit my part time jobs— _if_ you try to cut down on the drinking.”  
  
Bruce’s stare returns, and although it’s not as sharp as before (softened by something that Barry has no idea how to place), it still makes Barry clam up instantly, crushing the bucket of chicken closer to him as he stammers, “Yeah, no, never mind. That’s a boundary we’re not ready to cross together yet. Got it.”  
  
Bruce looks up at the ceiling. Sighs. Turns to make his way out of the living room.  
  
“Wait, where are you—”  
  
“I’m going to make a few calls. When I get back, I expect that tray to be clear.”  
  
“Oh, uh,” Barry glances at the food he has left. Realizes that it’s child’s play. “Yeah. I can do that. Yes, sir.”  
  
Barry grabs a chicken leg, looks right through as he tamps back the sudden upwell of appreciation.  
  
“Bruce,” he says, and he wonders if he said it too softly for a moment, because Bruce doesn’t stop walking. But Bruce halts at the doorway, the only indication that he’s listening.  
  
“Thank you,” Barry says. “Thank you for—for everything. For what it’s worth, you’re important to us, too.”  
  
Barry doesn’t see the way that Bruce’s jaw tightens, or the way that he draws a careful, shuddered breath before replying.  
  
“Don’t worry about it, Kid,” Bruce says. “We’re a team. We look out for each other.”  
  
And then he’s gone.  
  
\---  
  
When he returns later, three long calls and $35,000 later, Bruce finds Barry passed out on the couch, empty containers fanned around him like he’s fallen on the field of battle. He considers leaving the dumb kid there for a minute, but upon further consideration, he gently kicks at the couch with a foot, battling back a smirk as Barry wakes up with a slurred exclamation of surprise.  
  
“There’s a perfectly functional guest room two doors to the right down the middle hallway,” Bruce says. Barry rubs at his eyes, lets out a confused noise that does not help Bruce in his quest to seem like an emotionless statue. “Come on, Kid. Get off the couch. I don’t want it to smell like fast food.”  
  
“ _Alright_ ,” Barry grumbles, yawning as he struggles to his feet. “I’m goin’.”  
  
He staggers on the first few steps, grips onto Bruce’s arm for support until he’s able to find his footing. He pats Bruce on the back as he yawns again. “Thanks, Bruce. You’re the best.”  
  
“Feeling’s not mutual,” Bruce grouses, but Barry just smiles.  
  
\---  
  
“I still can’t believe he tried to strong-arm me into drinking less. Kid’s tougher than he looks, Alfred.”  
  
“Are you ever going to inform him that you were only drinking cider, Master Wayne?”  
  
“No. The more that he believes I was drunk when I said any of that, the better.”  
  
“Right. Wouldn’t want him knowing that we’re getting fond of him, would we?”  
  
“ _You’re_ getting fond of him. I’m getting chronic migraines.”  
  
“Of course, Master Wayne. My mistake. What a travesty.”  
  
\---  
  
It’s been a week.  
  
Well, if you want to get technical about it, it’s actually been ten days. Ten days since Barry had a seizure, woke up in Bruce’s home, had a heart-to-heart with Batman, passed out in Bruce’s home again, woke up late for work—  
  
You get it.  
  
But the exact number of days is irrelevant. All that really matters is that it’s been (roughly) a week, and since then, Barry hasn’t felt anywhere close to collapsing the way that he did before. Without the two extra jobs eating up his day, he’s been able to go out more, even been able to spend some quality time with Victor and Diana, who returned from Themyscira four days prior and promptly encompassed Barry in a crushing hug, telling him to _never do these things again_. (It turns out the Batman is a snitch.)  
  
Arthur even stopped by a few days ago, chucking a bag of some sort of foreign chips at Barry’s head with the sharp instructions to “stop being a dumbass” and “quit throwing bombs at my ocean,” because apparently screaming at the open sea was not the way to reach Arthur as Barry had previously thought. But it was fine. Arthur wasn’t angry (or at least any more so than usual) and the chips tasted like honey, so all-in-all it was a pleasant (if not wildly confounding) interaction.  
  
Now Arthur’s back in Atlantis, finishing up on his post-Steppenwolf delegations, and Diana’s become a semi-permanent fixture in the League again, popping up at missions as needed. Speaking of, the missions have slowed down, too, threats that require the League’s attention becoming less and less common as Superman earns back the public’s trust.  
  
And Barry’s still counting down the days to the weekend, but that’s just because he’s looking forward to crushing Victor at Mario Kart, or showing Diana his favorite ice cream shop in Central City, or seeing just how many pizzas he has to eat before he feels so full that he can no longer move. And he still burns the candle sometimes—still has a forty hour work week and the overwhelming knowledge that there are _so many_ guns in the world and that many of them will be pointed at him in the future—but when it gets to be too much, he has the League to pull him back from the edge, to put out the flame and make him take a breather. Or something along those lines. Barry’s always been kind of bad at metaphors. But he can work on it later.  
  
For now, Barry’s content to just lie back against Bruce’s sofa, listening to Bruce gripe about how his living room’s going to permanently smell like pizza at this rate even as he takes no further action to kick the speedster out of his home.  
  
(It’s been a week. Or ten days, actually. It doesn’t really matter. They’ve been great.)  
  
\---  
  
“Jacob, it’s been like two weeks. Please, let this die. Please?”  
  
“Your emergency contact is Bruce Wayne, and you never told me. _Bruce Wayne_ , Barry.”  
  
“Jacob—”  
  
“One of his cars costs more than my entire apartment complex. Bartholomew, I don’t think you understand.”  
  
“No, I get it, but—”  
  
“Have you ever been to his mansion?”  
  
“...nnno?”  
  
“Bartholomew Henry Allen, have you ever been to multi-billionaire Bruce Wayne’s mansion?”  
  
“...Okay, yeah, and it was awesome, but you can’t tell anyone or he’ll kill me.”  
  
“ _Dude_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for making this journey with me. Sorry for all the rambling, it's just that I'm obnoxious and loud. It probably will happen again.
> 
> Also, fun fact: Bruce Wayne doesn't actually drink in many of the comics (because alcohol will ruin his peak physical fitness and whatnot), BUT people expect a playboy like him to be boozing it up. Hence, the unlabeled cider.


End file.
